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NDLTD: Past, Present, and Future

ETD 2007: 10th Int. Symp. on ETDsUppsala, Sweden

Edward A. FoxExecutive Director, NDLTD, www.ndltd.org

fox@vt.eduVirginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA

http://fox.cs.vt.edu, Mobile: +1-540-230-6266

Outline

• Acknowledgements

• Digital Libraries

• NDLTD

• Recent and Future Work

• Summary

Acknowledgements

• All those working with ETDs

• NDLTD, including Board, Committees, and Members

• ETD 2007 Conference Team

• Sponsors

• Presenters, Attendees

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Acknowledgements (2)Board of Directors, Retired

• Scott EldredgeBrigham Young UniversityProvo, Utah, USA(first treasurer)

Acknowledgements (3): Mtgs• 1987 mtg in Ann Arbor: UMI, VT, …• 1992 mtg in Washington: CNI, CGS, UMI, VT and 10 univ’s• 1993 mtg in Atlanta to start Monticello Electronic Library

(regional, US Southeast): SURA, SOLINET• 1994 mtg at VT: std: PDF + SGML + multimedia objects• 1996 mtg w. funding by SURA, US Dept. of Education(FIPSE)• 1997 meetings in UK, Germany, ...• 1998 – 1st symposium – Memphis (20)• 1999 – 2nd symposium – Blacksburg (70)• 2000 – 3rd symposium – St. Petersburg (225)• 2001 – 4th symposium – Caltech (200)• 2002 – 5th symposium – BYU, Provo, Utah• 2003 – 6th symposium – Berlin (215) • 2004 – 7th symposium – U. Kentucky• 2005 – 8th symposium – Sydney, Australia• 2006 – 9th symposium – Quebec City, Canada

Acknowledgements (4):Future Conferences

• 2008 – 11th symposium– Aberdeen, Scotland– 4-7 June

• 2009 – 12th symposium– Pittsburgh– 10-13 June (tentative)

Outline

• Acknowledgements

• Digital Libraries

• NDLTD

• Recent and Future Work

• Summary

Digital Libraries (DLs) -- Objectives

• World Lit.: 24hr / 7day / from desktop• Ubiquitous• Integrated “super” information systems• Usable, Useful• Higher Quality, Lower Cost • Education, Knowledge Sharing, Discovery• Disintermediation -> Collaboration • Universities Reclaim Property• Interactive Courseware, Student Works

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D ig ita l L ib ra r y C o n te n t

A rtic le s ,R e p o rts,

B o o ks

T e xtD o cum e n ts

S p ee ch ,M u s ic

V id eoA u d io

(A e ria l)P h o tos

G e og rap h icIn fo rm ation

M o d e lsS im u la tio ns

S o ftw a re ,P ro g ra m s

G e no m eH u m a n,a n im a l,

p la n t

B ioIn fo rm ation

2 D , 3 D ,V R ,C A T

Im ag es a ndG ra p h ics

C o nte n tT yp e s

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Information Life Cycle

AuthoringModifying

OrganizingIndexing

StoringRetrieving

DistributingNetworking

Retention/ Mining

AccessingFiltering

UsingCreating

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Outline

• Acknowledgements

• Digital Libraries

• NDLTD

• Recent and Future Work

• Summary

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The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

www.NDLTD.org

Leader of the Worldwide ETD(Electronic Thesis and Dissertation) Initiative

Training AuthorsExpanding Access

Preserving KnowledgeImproving Graduate Education

Enhancing Scholarly CommunicationEmpowering Students & Universities

• Aiding universities to enhance graduate education, publishing and IPR efforts

• Helping improve the availability and content of theses and dissertations

• Educating ALL future scholars so they can publish electronically and effectively use digital libraries (i.e., are Information Literate and can be more expressive)

What are we doing?

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NDLTD Incorporation

• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations incorporated May 20, 2003 in Virginia, USA

• Charitable and educational purposes (501 c 3)

• Officers (now)– Executive Director (Ed Fox)– Secretary (Gail McMillan)– Treasurer (Austin McLean)

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Board of Directors• Suzie Allard (ETD 2004, U. Kentucky)• Denise A. D. Bedford (World Bank)• Julia C. Blixrud (ARL, SPARC)• José Luis Borbinha (Natl Lib Portugal)• Tony Cargnelutti• Vinod Chachra (VTLS)• William Clark (Ohio State U.)• Susan Copeland (RGU, UK)• Jude Edminster (Bowling Green St. U.)• Edward A. Fox (Executive Director,

Virginia Tech)• John H. Hagen (West Virginia U.)• Thomas B. Hickey (OCLC)• Christine Jewell (U. Waterloo, Canada)• Joan K. Lippincott (CNI)• Austin McLean (Treasurer, Proquest)• Gail McMillan (Secretary, Virginia Tech)

• Joseph Moxley (ETD 2000, USF)• Eva Müller (U. Uppsala, Sweden)• Ana Pavani (PUC Rio, Brazil)• Janice Rickards (chair of ADT)• Sharon Reeves (Library and Archives of

Canada)• Peter Schirmbacher (ETD 2003, Humboldt)• Samson Soong (Hong Kong U. Science &

Technology)• Hussein Suleman (U.Cape Town, S. Africa)• Shalini R. Urs (U. Mysore, India)• Eric F. Van de Velde (ETD 2001, Caltech)• Ellen Wagner (Adobe)• Xiaolin Zhang (National Science Library,

China)

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NDLTD Committees (Chairs)• Awards (John Hagen)• Conferences (Sharon Reeves)• Development (Suzie Allard, John Hagen)• Executive (Ed Fox)• Finance (Austin McLean)• Implementation (John Hagen)• Membership (Eric Van de Velde)• Nominating (Joan Lippincott )• Public Relations (Suzie Allard)• Services & Standards (Ana Pavani, Thom

Hickey)

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NDLTD New Committee• Services & Standards

– Blogs, Wikis– Metadata Standards– Partner Services– Statistical Reporting Standards (and logging)– Union Catalog– New initiatives …

– Please meet with Ana Pavani and Thom Hickey!

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NDLTD Committee Activities• Implementation

– How to apply standards?– How to coordinate a national/regional program?– How to launch a pilot project?– How to train students regarding copyright, digital

libraries, electronic publishing, preservation, …?

• Membership, Public Relations– How to clarify and publicize member services?– How to double membership in 2 years?

• Please update your Member Info!

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Member Support

• Annual conference

• ETD-L – listserv for discussion

• Union catalog

• Services for access

• Information for ETD projects– Standards, documentation

• Advocacy for ETD activities

• …

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Institutional Repositories

• For individual ETDs

• For publications from conferences, and other documents related to NDLTD

• Accessible from NDLTD site, and supported by NDLTD (run by VT)

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Union catalog: OCLC

• OCLC runs OAI data provider on TDs.

• Is getting data from WorldCat (so, from many sites!).

• Harvests from all others who contact them (see Thom Hickey, hickey@oclc.org).

• Need DC and either ETD-MS or MARC.

• Need a set for ETDs, or separate data provider.

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ETD Union Search Mirror Site in China (CALIS)(http://ndltd.calis.edu.cn – popular site!)

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OCLC SRU Interface

Outline

• Acknowledgements

• Digital Libraries

• NDLTD

• Recent and Future Work

• Summary

Recent and Future Work

• OAI

• Preservation (LOCKSS)

• Metadata: Update ETD-MS

• Other Future Services and Enhancements

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OAI - Open Archives Initiative

• Advocacy for interoperability

• Standard for transferring metadata among digital libraries– Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH)

• Simplicity• Generality• Extensibility

• Support for PMH => Open Archive (OA)

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OAI – Black Box Perspective

OA 1

OA 2

OA 4

OA 3

OA 5OA 6

OA 7

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DiscoveryCurrent

AwarenessPreservation

Service Providers

Data Providers

Metadata

harvestin

g

The World According to OAI

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LOCKSS

• Lots of copies keep stuff safe• Stanford (Vicky Reich)• Initial content: journals• Another registry for ETDs• Set of publisher manifests (information providers)• Set of storage systems (archival storage)• 2005 proof of concept inside USA• 2006 proof of concept for international members• Who wants to join to extend?

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VT Offer for Classification

• List of category systems– Dewey Decimal Classification– ProQuest categories– From Germany, Sweden

• Developing classifiers– Training sets, machine classifications– Service, code

• Call for partners and pilot testers

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ETD-MS

• ETD Metadata Standard– XML-encoded metadata standard

(content and encoding) for Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

– in part conforming to Dublin Core (DC)– using RDF– using UNICODE

• With specified relationship to MARC• Reworking and updating …

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Future Work – 1 of 3

• Collection– Cover all universities in every region, every

country– Expand from dissertations to theses to

undergrad theses to reports to e-portfolios– Add in page images of back files or at least

bib records (retrospective)

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Future Work – 2 of 3

• Promote use of ETDs– Collaborate with Google, Microsoft, …– Support students so have DOIs, resolved

references, XML works– Support cross language, multilingual, multimedia

search/browse– Cross-lingual summarization and support for

discovery – can we scale up dissertation project?• Room IX, Session 8, Friday, 13:30: Richardson & Fox

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Future Work – 3 of 3

• Enhance services for students– Help students with electronic submission, e-pub,

multimedia, hypermedia, electronic data sets, electronic lab notebooks

– Support students with annotations, threaded discussions, recommenders

– Support work with early versions of ETDs for collaboration, with limited access and chat groups

– Encourage submission of PPT, video of defense (or a rerun)

Summary

• Acknowledgements

• Digital Libraries

• NDLTD

• Recent and Future Work

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Why ETD? Short Answer

• For Students:– Gain knowledge and skills for the Information Age– Richer communication (digital information, multimedia, …)

• For Universities: – Easy way to enter the digital library field and benefit

thereby

• For the World: – Global digital library – large, useful, many services

• General:– Save time and money– Increased visibility for all associated with research results

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Spirit of NDLTD• Help make a better (smaller) world• Win-win-win (everyone can benefit)• Have fun helping others• Helpers/teachers learn more than those they work with• Build on standards• ETDs are preservable, popular, expressive, “better”

• Doable, feasible, learnable, affordable, sharable

• Please join/support NDLTD!

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Questions?Discussion?

Recommendations?

Thank You!